Notwithstanding Kenelm's satisfactory behaviour during the religious ceremony of which he had been the subject, I wished for more positive assurance that his reason was restored to him, and that he was aware of his state: I wished, as far as I might, to comfort him, and prepare him for his end. The task was most difficult: thirty days before, youth and the expectation of a long life were his: a month had been passed in a dream from which he was now awakened but to die. In his weak state, how enter on such a topic? I endeavoured to lead to it. "Do you love me, my dear son?"--"Yes, I love you; as I ought; you have great virtues."--"And great faults."--"It is not for me to judge of that."--"Do you forgive me the faults I may have committed in regard to you?"--"Assuredly I do." He signified that he should be obliged to vomit, and I withdrew; nor could I afterwards excite him to speak, though I frequently drew near the bed for that purpose, and, at times, gently called him by his name. His last words were words of charity, of pardon, and of peace. His father and mother took one of his hands in theirs; it was cold, colder than afterwards in death: he seemed unwilling to be thus disturbed; they laid the hand down, and, with their eldest daughter, awaited the end in painful and trembling anxiety: he appeared to suffer, but to be so oppressed as to be unable to give expression to the sense of what he suffered. The hour of midnight sounded: his last agony came on; and, within ten minutes, he expired on Sunday morning, the thirtieth of September, aged twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. The affliction of his parents and sister, who were fully sensible of the value of what they had lost, needs not to be described. The exclamation of Antoine Leturgé, the domestic, the other witness of this scene of woe, was simple and expressive: "Il est mort, lui, qui étoit si bon!"[78] As they gazed on the awful object before them, the sister said, "His eyes ought to be closed;" the mother, without due recollection at the moment, made a sign to the servant: he, with right feeling, gently said, "C'est au père à faire cela:"[79] and the father did it. After attending to the due arrangement of the chamber, and of the precious remains, I went up stairs: the doors of the chambers of my two sons were close to each other; I was strangely struck by the sight of the open door of the untenanted chamber, and stopt a moment to recover force to enter into the other. I saw the flushed face of my only surviving son through the gauze that surrounded the bed; I heard his breathing, too full, but tranquil and equal. I withdrew, and took a few hours troubled sleep on the couch on which both my sons had commenced their dreadful malady.